Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

Nine

Billy didn’t hate Colonie Street entirely, for it would have meant hating his mother, his greatest friends, Toddy Dunn, for one, even his ancestors. It would have meant hating the city the Irish had claimed as their own from vantage points of streets like Colonie. It was the street where he was born and had lived until adolescence, when he went off to room by himself. It was the street his sister, Peg, left with their mother when Peg married George Quinn and took a bigger and newer house in the North End.

Billy told the taxi driver to leave him off at the corner of North Pearl, and he walked up the hill toward Patsy McCall’s house. He passed the old Burns house, where the ancient Joe Burns always sat in the window, ten years in the window at least. Old Joe lived with his son, Kid, the sexton of St. Joseph’s Church for years until Father Mooney put him through undertakers’ school; and next door to them the Dillons: Floyd, a conductor on the Central, who put Billy and Peg and their mother in a Pullman with only coach tickets when they went to New York to see the ocean for the first time. Across the street was the vacant lot where the Brothers School used to stand, and next to that the Daugherty house, gone, and then the other house: That house Billy did not now look at directly but saw always in his memory and hated, truly did hate that much of the old street.

And it was an old street even when Billy was born on it. It ran westward along the river flats from the Basin, that sheltered harbor that formed the mouth of the Erie Canal, and rose up the northernmost of the three steep ridges on which Albany was built: Arbor Hill. It rose for half a mile, crossed Ten Broeck, the street where the lumber barons had built their brownstones, and, still rising, ran another half mile westward to all but bump the Dudley Observatory, where scientific men of the city catalogued the stars (8241 measured and recorded for the International Catalogue as of 1883) from the top of the same hill on which Mike Mulvaney grazed and daily counted his two dozen goats.

The street took its name from The Colonie itself, that vast medieval demesne colonized in 1630 by an Amsterdam pearl merchant named Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, who was also known as the First Patroon, the absentee landlord who bought from five tribes of Indians some seven hundred thousand acres of land, twenty-four miles long and forty-eight miles wide, out of which a modest seven thousand acres would eventually be expropriated by the subsequent Yankee overlords to create the city of Albany.

Each power-wielding descendant of Van Rensselaer to assume the feudal mantle of the Patroonship during the next two centuries would maintain exploitative supremacy over thousands of farm renters on the enormous manor called, first, Rensselaerswyck, and later, The Colonie. Each Patroon would make his home in the Manor House, which rose handsomely out of a riverside meadow just north of the city on the bank of a stream that is still called Patroon Creek. Mickey McManus from Van Woert Street went rabbit hunting one day near The Patroon’s creek and shot a cow. Few can now remember that meadow or even where the Manor House stood precisely. It closed forever in 1875, when the widow of the Last Patroon died there, and it was later moved to make room for the Delaware and Hudson railroad tracks, dismantled brick by brick and reassembled in Williamstown as a fraternity house.

But long before that, North Albany, where Billy Phelan and Martin Daugherty both now lived, and Arbor Hill, where the McCalls and Billy’s aunts and uncles still lived, had been seeded in part with the homes of settlers who worked as servants and as farm and field hands for the Patroon. Billy Phelan’s great-grandfather, Johnny Phelan, a notably belligerent under-sheriff, was given the safekeeping of the Manor House as his personal charge after four rebellious prisoners barricaded themselves in their cell at the penitentiary and, with a stolen keg of gunpowder, threatened to blow themselves up unless the food improved. Johnny Phelan sneaked a fire hose to the door of their cell, opened the door suddenly, and drenched their powder with a swift blast. Then he leaped over their barricade and clubbed them one by one into civility.

Martin Daughterty’s grandmother, Hanorah Sweeney, had been the pastry cook in the Patroon’s kitchen and was famed for her soda bread and fruitcakes, which, everyone said, always danced off their platters and onto the finicky palates of the Patroon and his table companions, among them the Prince of Wales, George Washington’s grandnephew, and Sam Houston.

Arbor Hill and North Albany continued to grow as the railroads came in, along with the foundries, the stove works, the tobacco factory and the famous Lumber District, which started at the Basin and ran northward two and a half miles between the river and the canal. Processing Adirondack logs into lumber was Albany’s biggest business at mid-century, and the city fathers proclaimed that Albany was now the white pine distribution center of the world.

The North End and Arbor Hill grew dense with the homes of lumber handlers, moulders, railroad men, and canalers, and in the winter, when the river and the canal froze, many of them cut ice, fifteen thousand men and boys cutting three million tons from the Hudson in six weeks at century’s end.

They all clustered on streets such as Colonie to live among their own kind, and the solidarity became an obvious political asset. Not the first to notice this, but the first to ride it to local eminence, was the fat, bearded, Irish-born owner of the Beverwyck brewery, Michael Nolan, who in 1878 was elected mayor of the city Coming only three years after the death of the Last Patroon’s widow, this clearly signaled a climactic change in city rule: the Dutch and Yankees fading, the American Irish, with the help of Jesus, and by dint of numbering forty per cent of the city’s population, waxing strong. And eight years ahead of Boston in putting an Irishman in City Hall.

Nolan had lived on Millionaire’s Row, on the east side of Ten Broeck, two and a half blocks from Patsy McCall’s home on Colonie Street. Patsy, who could have lived like a millionaire but didn’t, was in the Irish descendance of political power from Nolan as surely as the Last Patroon had descended from the first; and was a descendant in style as well as power. When Nolan was elected, he swathed his brewery wagons and dray horses in red, white, and blue bunting and saw to it that Beverwyck beer was sold in every saloon in town. Nolan’s example was not wasted on the McCalls. Gubernatorial hopeful Tom Dewey revealed that in October 1938, Stanwix, the McCall beer, was sold in 243 of the city’s 249 taverns.

Billy Phelan knew the Patroon only as a dead word, Nolan not at all. But in the filtered regions of his cunning Irish brain, he knew the McCalls stood for power far beyond his capacity to imagine.

They were up from below. And when you’re up, you let no man pull you down. You roll your wagons over the faces of the enemy.

And who is the enemy?

It’s well you might ask.

Billy pushed the door bell.

Bindy McCall opened the door, smiled, and pulled Billy by the arm, gently, into the house, the first time Billy had entered Patsy’s home. The front hall, leading upstairs and also into both front and back parlors, reminded Billy of the hated house across the street, probably built from the same blueprints.

Bindy held Billy’s arm and led him into the front parlor with its thick oriental rug, its heavy drapes and drawn shades, where a scowling male ancestor of the McCalls looked down insistently on Billy: a powerful face above a neck stretched by a high collar and string tie, a face not unlike Patsy’s, who sat beneath it at a card table, shirtless, reclining in his blue bathrobe in a leather armchair; pads and pencils on the table beside a telephone. An old player piano dominated the room, where Patsy no doubt played and sang the dirties he was famous for, “Paddy McGinty’s Goat,” for one.

Billy had heard him sing that at the Phoenix Club in the North End on a Sunday years ago when the political notables of North Albany turned out for an election rally. Billy went just to watch the spectacle and barely spoke to anyone, never said, Hello Patsy, as he could have, as thousands did whenever the great leader hove into range. Hello Patsy. Billy just listened and never forgot the song and later learned it himself: Patrick McGinty, an Irishman of note, fell heir to a fortune and he bought himself a goat.

A panorama of a Civil War battle, one of Patsy’s well-known interests, hung in a gilded frame over the piano. A pair of brass donkeys as bookends, and with Dickens and Jefferson, a biography of Jim Jeffries, and canvases of Fifth and Eighth Ward voters sandwiched between the butt ends of the animals, sat on top of the piano. On an old oak sofa across from Patsy sat a man Billy didn’t know. Bindy introduced him as Max Rosen, Matt McCall’s law partner.

“You’re a tough man to find,” Bindy said. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“I wasn’t hiding. Just playing cards.”

“We heard about the holdup and what you did. You’re a tough guy, Billy.”

“How’d you hear about it? It just happened.”

“Word gets around. We also heard what you did in the Grand Lunch with that crazy kid.”

“You heard that, too?”

“That, too,” Bindy said.

“Listen, Bin,” said Billy, “I’m really sorry about Charlie.”

“Are you?”

“Sure I am. You got any word on him yet?”

“We got a little. That’s why we wanted to talk to you.”

“Me? What’ve I got to do with anything?”

“Relax. You want a beer?”

“Sure, I’ll have a beer with you, Bin.”

Bindy, shirtsleeves rolled above the elbow, soup stain on shirtfront, no tie, wearing eyeglasses and house slippers, looked like somebody else to Billy, not Bindy McCall, the dapper boss of the street. He looked tired, too, and Patsy the same. Patsy stared at Billy. Max Rosen, in his suit coat, tie up tight to a fresh collar, also stared. Billy in the middle, a new game. He was glad to see Bindy come back with the beer bottle and glass: Stanwix.

“I heard you took a beating today with the nags,” Bindy said, pouring Billy’s beer.

“You hear what I had for breakfast?”

“No, but I could find out.”

“I ate alone, no witnesses.”

“There’s other ways.”

“Yeah.” And Billy took a drink.

“You know where your old man is?” Patsy asked.

“My old man?”

“Yours.”

“No. I don’t know.”

“I heard he was in town,” said Patsy.

“My father in Albany? Where?”

“I didn’t hear that. Somebody saw him downtown today.”

“Goddamn,” Billy said.

“You wanna see him?” asked Patsy.

“Sure I wanna see him. I haven’t saw him in twenty years. Twenty-two years.”

“I’ll see if I can track him down.”

“That’d be terriffic, Mr. McCall.”

“Call me Patsy.”

“Patsy. That’s a terrific thing if you can do that.”

“Maybe you can do something for us.”

“Maybe I can.”

“You heard that kidnap rumor about me,” Bindy said, sitting on a folding chair across the card table from Patsy. The card table Billy worked at was in better shape.

“I heard that last summer.”

“From who?”

“Jesus, I don’t remember, Bin. One of those things you hear at a bar when you’re half in the bag, you don’t remember. I didn’t give it the time of day. Then I remembered it today.”

“And got hot at Louie Dugan for telling me about it.”

“I didn’t expect to have it repeated.”

“We heard the same rumor last year and traced it to a couple of local fellows. And maybe, just maybe, that ties in to Charlie. Do you follow me?”

“I follow.”

“Neither of these fellows are in town and we don’t know just where they are. But they got a friend who’s in town, and that’s why you’re here.”

“I’m the friend?”

“No, you’re a friend of the friend. The friend is Morrie Berman.”

The noise Billy made then was a noncommittal grunt. Maloy and Curry, Berman’s pals. On the list, Curry.

“We understand you know Mr. Berman well,” Max Rosen said.

“We play cards together.”

“We understand you know him better than that,” Rosen said.

“I know him a long time.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know all about it,” said Patsy, “and we also know you didn’t give Pop O’Rourke’s man his ten dollars today.”

“I told Pop why.”

“We know what you told him,” said Patsy, “and we know your brother-in-law, Georgie Quinn, is writing numbers and don’t have the okay for the size books he’s taking on.”

“Georgie talked to Pop about that, too.”

“And Pop told him he could write a little, but now he’s backing the play himself. He’s ambitious, your brother-in-law.”

“What is all this, Bindy? What are we talking about? You know the color of my shorts. What’s it for?” Billy felt comfortable only with Bindy, but Bindy said nothing.

“Do you know the Berman family, Mr. Phelan?” Max Rosen asked.

“I know Morrie’s old man’s in politics, that’s all.”

“Do you like Morrie Berman?” Rosen asked.

“I like him like I like a lot of guys. I got nothing against him. He’s the guy had the idea to buy me a steak tonight. Nice.”

“Do you like Charlie?” Patsy asked.

“Do I like him? Sure I like him. I grew up with him. Charlie was always a good friend of mine, and I don’t say that just here. I bullshit nobody on this.”

Bindy poured more beer into Billy’s glass and smiled at him.

“All right, Billy,” Bindy said, “we figure we know your feelings. We wouldn’t have okayed you for that Saratoga job if we didn’t trust you. We know you a long time. And you remember after the Paul Whiteman thing, we gave you that other job, too.”

“The Chicago Club?”

“That’s right.”

“I thought that came from Lemon Lewis. I didn’t think you even knew about that.”

“We knew. We do Albany people.”

“Then it’s two I owe you.”

“Just one,” Bindy said. “We trusted you then, we trust you now. But that don’t mean forever.”

“Who the hell am I not to trust? What do I know?”

“We don’t know what you know,” Patsy said.

“It’s what you might come to know in the next few days that’s important,” Max Rosen said. “We’re interested in Mr. Berman, in everything he says and does. Everything.”

“Morrie doesn’t tell me secrets,” Billy said.

“We don’t expect that,” said Max. “If he’s involved in the kidnapping, and we’re by no means saying that he is, then he’s hardly likely to talk about it at all. But you must know, Mr. Phelan, that men sometimes betray themselves indirectly. They reveal what’s on their mind merely by random comment. Berman might, for instance, mention the men involved in a context other than criminal. Do you follow me?”

“No.”

“You’re not stupid,” Patsy said, an edge to his voice. He leaned forward in his chair and looked through Billy’s head.

“Nobody ever said I was,” Billy said, looking back through Patsy’s head.

“Billy,” said Bindy in a soothing tone, “we’re playing in every joint where we can get a bet down. I tell you one thing. Some people wouldn’t even put it past Berman’s old man to be in on this.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Max Rosen said. “Jake Berman isn’t capable of such behavior. I’ve known him all my life.”

“I don’t accuse him,” Bindy said, “but he don’t like us. I just make the point that we suspect everybody.”

“People might even suspect you, with your name in the paper,” Patsy said.

Billy snorted. “Me?”

“People talk.”

“Don’t pay attention if you hear that,” Bindy said. “We know you’re clean. We wanted you and Berman in the same boat. He don’t know why you’re on the list, but now you and him got that in common.”

“You think that’ll make him talk to me?”

“It could. What’d he say tonight?”

“We played cards and he kicked the holdup guy a little. He said he talked to Mr. Rosen here, and he said he didn’t get along with his old man. We talked about a drink that we had one time.”

“Who did he talk about?” Bindy asked. “Who?”

“Tabby Bender. George Kindlon, who tended bar for Tabby.”

“Who else?”

“That’s all I remember.”

“Edward Curry is on the list. Did he mention him?”

“I mentioned Curry, that his name was spelled wrong. And I told a story about him.”

“What story?”

“About the whore in Boston called him honey and he asked her, How come you know my name. You think Curry’s mixed up in this?”

“What did Berman say when you told the story?” Bindy asked.

“He laughed.”

“You didn’t talk about nobody else? Nobody? Think.”

“I talked about a lot of things but not to Berman.”

“Did he say anything about Hubert Maloy?”

“No.”

Bindy leaned back in his chair and looked at Patsy. Billy looked at the brothers, from one to the other, and wondered how he would get out of the Maloy lie. He wondered why he’d even bothered to lie. It meant nothing. He saw the faces of strangers he’d known all his life staring him down. In between them, the face of the McCall ancestor was no longer scowling down from the wall but was only stern and knowing, a face flowing with power and knowledge in every line. There was a world of behavior in this room Billy did not grasp with the clarity he had in pool and poker, or at the crap table. Billy knew jazz and betting and booking horses and baseball. He knew how to stay at arm’s length from the family and how to make out. He resisted knowing more than these things. If you knew what the McCalls knew, you’d be a politician. If you knew what George Quinn knew, you’d be a family man. They had their rewards but Billy did not covet them. Tie you up in knots, pin you down, put you in the box. He could learn anything, study it. He could have been in politics years ago. Who couldn’t on Colonie Street? But he chose other ways of staying alive. There never was a politician Billy could really talk to, and never a hustler he couldn’t.

“All right, Billy,” Bindy said, standing up. “I think we’ve made our point. Call us any time.” He wrote two phone numbers on the pad and handed the sheet to Billy.

“You come up with anything that means something to Charlie,” Patsy said, “you got one hell of a future in this town.”

“What if I don’t run into Berman again?”

“You don’t run into him, then you find him and stay with him,” Patsy said. “If you need money for that, call us.”

“Berman’s a big boy. He goes where he wants.”

“You’re a big boy, too,” Patsy said.

“What Patsy says about your future,” Bindy said, “that goes triple for me. For a starter we clear up your debt with Martin Daugherty. And you never worry about anything again. Your family the same.”

“What if Berman catches on? He’s too smart to pump.”

“If you’re sure he’s on to it, drop it.”

“We’ll get word to you.”

When Billy stood up, Max Rosen put a paternal hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about anything, Mr. Phelan. Do what you can. It’s an unusual situation.”

“Yeah, all of that,” Billy said.

Bindy shook hands and Patsy gave him a nod, and then Billy was in the hallway looking at the bannister, pretty much like the one he used to slide down in the shithouse across the street until his Aunt Sate caught him and pulled his ear and sent him home. He went out the door and closed it behind him. He stood on the McCall stoop, looking up the street at the Dolan house, remembering the Dolan kid who was kidnapped off this street when Billy was little. An uncle did it. They found the kid in the Pine Bush, safe, and brought him home and put him in the window so everybody could see that he was all right. The kid was only four. Everybody wanted to hang the uncle, but he only went to jail.

Billy walked toward Pearl Street, heading back downtown. He remembered Georgie Fox, marked lousy for what he did to Daddy Big. All anybody on Broadway needed to hear was that Billy was finking on Morrie, and they’d put him in the same box with Georgie. Who’d trust him after that? Who’d tell him a secret? Who’d lend him a quarter? He wouldn’t have a friend on the whole fucking street. It’d be the dead end of Billy’s world, all he ever lived for, and the McCalls were asking him to risk that. Asking hell, telling him. Call us any time.

When he was halfway to Clinton Avenue, Bo Linder pulled up and asked if everything was all right. Billy said it was, and Bo said, “That’s good, Billy, now keep your nose clean.” And Billy just looked at the son of a bitch and finally nodded, not at all sure he knew how to do that any more.

When Billy got to Becker’s and sat down in the booth beside him (across from Bart Muller), George Quinn was eating a ham sandwich and telling Muller of the old days when he ran dances in Baumann’s Dancing Academy and hired King Jazz and his orchestra to play, and McEnelly’s Singing Orchestra, and ran dances, too, up in Sacandaga Park and brought in Zita’s orchestra, and danced himself at all of them, of course. “They put pins in our heels for the prize waltz,” George said. “Anybody bent the pin was out. I won many a prize up on my toes and I got the loving cups to prove it.”

“No need to prove it,” Muller said.

“We danced on the boat to Kingston sometimes, and the night boat to New York, but mostly we took the ferry from Maiden Lane for a nickel and it went up to Al-Tro Park, Al-Tro Park on the Hudson; they even wrote a song about that place, and what a wonder of a place it was. Were you ever up there?”

“Many times,” Muller said.

“We’d take the boat back down to Maiden Lane, or sometimes we’d walk back downtown to save the nickel. One night, three fellows on the other side of the street kept up with me and Giddy O’Laughlin all the way to Clinton Avenue. We didn’t know who they were till they crossed Broadway, and one was Legs Diamond. Somebody was gonna throw Legs off the roof of the Hendrick Hudson Hotel that night, but he gave ’em the slip.”

“Why are you talking about Legs Diamond?” Billy asked George.

“I’m not talking about Legs Diamond, I’m talking about going to dances. Bart lives in Rensselaer. We both went to dances at the pavilion out at Snyder’s Lake.”

“George,” said Billy, “did you come in here to reminisce or what?”

“We’ve just been cuttin’ it up, me and Bart,” George said, “and the business is on, anyway. I’m interested in Bart’s book. I’m branching out and Bart knows that. He just took over the night-shift book over at Huyck’s mill, and now he’s looking for somebody to lay off with. Am I right, Bart?”

“That’s right, George.”

“Then you made the deal,” Billy said.

“I guess we did,” said George.

“I’ll give you a buzz on it,” Muller said. “But I got to get home or the wife worries.”

“We’ll talk on the phone, Bart,” George said. “I was glad to meet you.”

“Mutual,” said Muller, and he nodded at Billy and left.

George sat back and finished his tea and wiped his lips with his white linen napkin and folded it carefully.

“I don’t know what the hell that was all about,” Billy said. “Why’d you want me here?”

“Just to break the ice.”

“Break the ice? There was no ice. You never shut up.”

“I didn’t want to push too hard the first time. We’ll iron out the details when he calls.”

“Calls? He’s not gonna call. You made no impression on him. You didn’t talk about money.”

“He didn’t bring it up.”

“He came to see you, didn’t he? Why the hell does he want to talk about Snyder’s Lake, for chrissake? He’s writing a book and he wants a layoff and he wants protection. You didn’t give him a goddamn thing to make him think you even know what the hell a number is.”

“He knows.”

“He does like hell. How could he? You didn’t talk about having the okay or that you got cash to guarantee his payoffs. You didn’t say how late he could call in a play or tell him he wouldn’t have to worry getting stuck with a number because you’ll give him the last call and get rid of it for him. You didn’t tell him doodley bejesus. George, what the hell are you doing in the rackets? You ought to be selling golf clubs.”

“Who died and left you so smart?”

“I’m not smart, George, or I’d be rich. But I hustle. You don’t know how to hustle.”

“I’m not in debt up to my ass.”

“You ain’t rich either. And let me tell you something else. You don’t even have the okay.”

“Says who?”

“Says Patsy McCall. I was talking to him, and he says you never got the okay to back numbers. All you got the okay for was to lay off. Twenty percent, no more.”

“Pop O’Rourke knows what I’m doing.”

“Patsy said Pop didn’t know.”

“I’ll call Pop in the morning. I’ll straighten it out. How come you talked to Patsy?”

“It was about another thing.”

“Something about your name in the paper?”

“Something about that, yeah.”

“Oh, it’s a secret. You got secrets with Patsy McCall. Excuse me, let me out. Your company is too rich for my blood.”

“Look, George, don’t strain your juice. I don’t keep secrets I don’t have to keep. You know what’s going on with Charlie McCall, and you ought to know by this time I’m on your side. For chrissake, don’t you know that?”

“Mmmmmm,” said George.

“You don’t want to know what I know, George. Believe me.”

“All right, Billy, but you got a nasty tongue.”

“Yeah. Have a drink. I buy.”

“No, I just had tea.”

“Have a drink, for chrissake. Do you good.”

“I don’t want a drink. I’ll take the nickel. What did Patsy say about me? Was he mad?”

“He didn’t sound happy. He mentioned you by name.”

“I don’t want to get in any jackpots with Patsy. I’ll call Pop first thing in the morning. I never had a cross word with the McCalls all my life. I give fifteen dollars to John Kelleher for Patsy’s first campaign as assessor and Kelleher only asked me for five.”

“You’ll fix it. Probably you just got to pay more dues.”

“I’m not making anything yet. I’m losing money.”

“It’s goin’ around, that problem.”

“But I can’t afford more.”

“You can’t afford to stay in business?”

“Pop understands I’m not in the chips yet.”

“How does he understand that? You expect him to check your books?”

“No, I don’t expect nothing like that.”

“Then how the hell does he know your action? All he knows is you’re moving into heavier stuff. And you got to pay heavier dues for that. George, you been in this racket fifteen years, and you been in this town all your life. You know how it works.”

“I’ll pay if Patsy said I got to pay. But Patsy understands a guy being down on his luck.”

“Don’t cry the blues to them. Don’t beg for anything. If they say pay, just pay and shut up about it.”

“I don’t beg from anybody.”

“Tell ’em your story straight and don’t weep no tears. I’m telling you be tough, George.”

“I know what I’m doing. I know how it works.”

“All right. You want that drink?”

“I’ll take a rain check.”

George went out onto Broadway, and Billy went to the bar for a tall beer, thinking how George couldn’t get off the dime. A banty rooster and don’t underrate him when he fights. But he don’t fight easy enough. Been around tough guys and politicians all his life and he don’t know how to blow his nose right. But Billy has to admit George ain’t doing bad for a fifty-year-old geezer. Got the house and Peg and a great kid in Danny. Billy’s fifty, he’ll be what? Alone? Racking balls like Daddy Big? On the chalk like Lemon Lewis? Nineteen years to find out.

“Your lady friend Angie called again, Billy,” Red Tom said, as he slid Billy a new, tall, free one. “She says it’s urgent.”

“I know her urgent.”

“And she says it’s not what you think. Important, she says.”

“Important.”

“She sounded like she meant it.”

“I’ll check her out, Tommy. Have one on me.”

“Save your money, Billy. Winter’s coming.”

“Billy knows where the heat is.”

“Up in Angie’s room?”

“Some there, yeah. Definitely some up there.”